The English Riviera

Former blog-house band has fully transitioned into a sleek, urbane pop-rock outfit, taking polished cues from Steely Dan and Phoenix.

Devonshire, England's Metronomy have traveled an impressive stylistic distance in the short span of three albums. The group began in 2006 as glitchy electronic smirkers, proffering a garishly irreverent take on chinstroking IDM. Yet for their third full-length effort, The English Riviera, they've fully transitioned into a sleek, urbane pop-rock outfit, taking polished cues from the well-heeled likes of Steely Dan and Phoenix.

The subtraction and addition of band members during that time surely played a role, yet Metronomy have largely always been the baby of singer and multi-instrumentalist Joseph Mount. And while the music Mount and his comrades are making might sound a lot different from what they were turning out at the group's inception, the two sounds do have a philosophical kinship. There's a significant amount of deliberation apparent in both sonic approaches; as loopy as "early" Metronomy may have been, when you're making electronic music mostly without words that isn't meant for the dancefloor, craft is necessarily going to be a major selling point. Likewise, finely calibrated pop-rock invites an appreciation of its studio-sculpted contours.

As you'd imagine given that description, The English Riviera is an extremely listenable album, starting with "We Broke Free", an exquisite, low-slung slice of 70s studio rock redolent of Boz Scaggs and the Dan. That seductively contented vibe pervades much of the record, including "She Wants", "Loving Arm", and the waltzing "Trouble". While still vigorously scrubbed, songs like "Everything Goes My Way", "The Look", and "The Bay" reflect dance and indie sensibilities, aligning those efforts more closely with the likes of Phoenix, Hot Chip, Junior Boys, and Stars. But where Steely Dan's lounge-lizard odes were laced with irony and venom, and where the springy pop of Phoenix is animated by giddy energy, Mount's immaculate compositions remain mostly inert. Almost all of the songs on The English Riviera sound great, yet few of them really emotionally or physically involve the listener, and there's little to take away besides an appreciation of that effortlessly attractive sheen. Metronomy deserve a ton of credit for so quickly and satisfyingly mastering a sound that's so disparate from the band's origins. However, the group hasn't quite figured out how to animate its precise creations with personality or passion, suggesting they'd be best served by not immediately leaping to another sonic identity with their next release.